1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates, in general, to a device for feeding buttons to a sewing position using a conveyor belt and, more particularly, to a device for feeding buttons to a sewing position while centering the buttons and adjusting the width and height of a button feeding passage in accordance with the dimension of the buttons to be conveyed by the conveyor belt, thus appropriately arranging the buttons on garments at the sewing position.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As well known to those skilled in the art, buttons are originally used to fasten a shirt, coat, etc. and particularly have a collateral function to decorate the clothes when they are sewn on outerwear.
Such buttons are put on during a process of manufacturing clothes. The buttons are typically made of hard materials and have two or more holes at which the buttons are sewn on garments. When the buttons are manually sewn on garments, the buttons have to be manually positioned at the sewing position one by one and this reduces work efficiency of the sewing operation. On the other hand, when the buttons are automatically sewn on garments, the buttons have to be fed to the sewing position by a feeding member. However, it is necessary to prepare a plurality of feeding members having different dimensions meeting different sizes of buttons to be fed to the sewing position. During a sewing process, the feeding members have to be changed in accordance with the sizes of buttons to be fed to the sewing position. This reduces work efficiency and productivity of the sewing process.
In addition, there is no means for centering the buttons at the sewing position. Therefore, the button feeding operation may fail to accomplish the desired work efficiency. Particularly, when the buttons are fed to the sewing position with the buttons being not centered, this causes the buttons to be badly sewn on the garments at the sewing position.